The Death Of James Buchanan Barnes
by AmeliaSkellig
Summary: "Bucky?" the woman in black said. "Take my hand." On the night James Buchanan Barnes died, he lay shattered beneath the stars, in the silence, bleeding, and cold, and alone. That's when two women appeared before him and offered him a choice. [oneshot]


**A/N:** This is technically part of one of my "bigger stories", but it's a memory, so it can be read as a stand alone.

Fun fact, Endless Death is canonly part of the Marvel universe, so it's not even really a crossover.

I'm dying to write happier DeathDeath dynamics in the future, this was so much fun.

Sorry if they're ooc, they're doing their job and it's all business + I didn't want to detract from Bucky's story or my main storyline. :) this is pretty much all of my favorite things :)

* * *

 _The first thing he was aware of was pain._

 _He could hear the wind whistling overhead, cutting through his clothes, and he could feel the snow, melting and numbing his skin. His head spun, and he was sure he had more than a few broken ribs. There was a strange, sharp emptiness on his left arm. He felt nauseous._

 _Bucky opened his eyes, turning on his side, chest heaving as he retched up the contents of his stomach. He remembered, oddly, talking to Steve about how he had thrown up at Coney Island. God, this was worse, this was so much worse._

 _He brought a hand up to his head and it came back covered in blood. The world spun around him, the tall walls of the canyon bleeding in and out of his vision. The stars glimmered overhead, and it obvious it had been hours here, in the cold, and the dark, and silence. He tried to look around, but the simple action of turning to the side made him give a short, dull cry of pain. He was on a narrow ledge, above a rushing river. A few inches to his right, and he would have been swept away in the icy current. He was already half buried in fresh snow, and the stuff under him was thick, and stained a deep red._

 _He looked down, at his left arm, and blinked. All that was left was a bloody, tattered stump. He tried to lift it, but it was too heavy. He shut his eyes, and it was like he burning alive as he shook, tears falling down his face and freezing on his cheeks._

 _But it was okay. They'd come back for him. Steve, the Commandos, Pegs, the others. They always came back for each other. They'd get him out of this._

 _"I'm sorry, Bucky," a soft voice said. He looked up to see two women sitting next to him. Both of them looked at him, and both looked very out of place. One was a woman dressed in flowing, purple robes, although there was something slightly off about her face, like it was frozen beneath her hood. Her eyes were empty, pure white, and there were faint black marks around them, like flowers. The other was an abnormally pale woman dressed in a black dress with black hair, as dark as the night above them, with a swirl under her eye, and a silver necklace that flickered like the stars overhead. She was the one to have spoken. Bucky had the strangest feeling he knew them both. "They're not coming back for you."_

 _He opened his mouth to speak, and instead of words, blood came spilling out. He began to cough. A few stray drops landed on his face. His lungs were frozen. Everything hurt, everything hurt so bad._

 _"You're dying," the other woman said. "And they're not coming back for you."_

 _Bucky blinked, the tears swimming in his eyes becoming heavier. "I-I'm mmm- dy-dying," he managed. "You-You're... D-death?"_

 _"We are," they said in unison._

 _"But just because we're Death, it doesn't mean that you have to die," the woman in black said._

 _"We are here to offer you a choice," the woman in purple said._

 _"And whatever you choose will shape the world to come," the woman in black said._

 _"If you take my hand," the woman in purple said, and he saw her hand, it was a skeleton's, made of bones, with no flesh on it. She reached up, and took off her face, no, her mask, revealing a skull that smiled down at him grotesquely. "I will take you away from this pain. It'll be over, and you can rest."_

 _"If you take my hand," the woman in black said. "You're going to face trials and pain unlike any other. Your actions will haunt you forever, and a part of James Barnes will had died right here anyways, despite your choice to live. You will never be the same, and James, this is only the beginning. It's going to get much, much worse."_

 _"B-but?"_

 _"But if you stay, you'll change the world, and then you'll help it."_

 _"I'm afraid." He managed to say it without his voice trembling._

 _"I know," the woman in black said, calmly, matter-of-factly. "You have every right to be."_

 _He looked back up at the sky, and let out a small, bitter sob. "It. It h-hur-hurts."_

 _"We know," they said in unison._

 _He looked back at the woman dressed in black. "Your-your Death? Why you?"_

 _"Because I'm with everyone when they're born," she said, understanding what he meant. "And if you choose to live on, you're going to be reborn."_

 _He looked at the woman in purple, and then at the woman in black._

 _"I-if I don't choose you," he said. "People will d-die?"_

 _"People die with or without you, that is a law of life," the skeleton woman said. "They will die regardless if you live or not. But if you live, there will be some lives you have a hand in ending, and some deaths you postpone."_

 _"You're lucky," the other woman said. "You have a choice. Most people don't get that."_

 _"And you're unlucky. Because of your choice, your actions, and all consequences, good or bad, are on you."_

 _"But you have to choose, Bucky," the woman in black said. "Will you take my hand?"_

 _"Or mine?"_

 _He shut his eyes._

 _"I know it's not easy," the woman in black said. "But I think you know what you're going to do. I think you've known from the second we offered it to you."_

 _He nodded, and the action made his brain feel like it was exploding. He looked at the woman in black, and nodded again. Her necklace glinted around her neck. She looked sad, mournful even, but like she still understood._

 _"Then, James Barnes, I'm very sorry," she said, and she extended her pale hand, her nails painted black. He stared at her. "And we'll be seeing you. We always see everyone."_

 _He turned back to the sky, and the stars, the night, the snow, it was so beautiful. He looked down at his arm, at his broken body, and he felt, for a moment, the briefest second, completely free of pain. He smiled faintly._

 _"The fair, the brave, the good must die," he said. "And I ain't any of those. I'm just a dumb kid from Brooklyn, too stupid to turn back now."_

 _And then it was back, his bones were broken, his lungs were filling with blood, he was drowning, his head was splitting, and he let out a cry, almost a whimper._

 _"Bucky?" the woman in black said. "Take my hand."_

 _He looked up to her, and she smiled. He reached up ,with his only hand left, and slid it into hers._

 _James Barnes died. And so it ended._

 _The Winter Soldier was born. And so it began._


End file.
